A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.
Links may expire , require subscription or go behind pay walls. Please send news and knowledge you think would be useful to al.cross@uky.edu. Follow us on Twitter @RuralJournalism

Thursday, November 15, 2012

The combination of the Great Recession, President Obama's policies and the coal industry's allegations of a "war on coal" appear to have made residents of two major coal-producing counties in Central Appalachia less supportive of conservation and environmental rules, and more supportive of extracting local natural resources for current benefit rather than preserving them for future generations.

The residents of Harlan and Letcher counties, on Kentucky's border with Virginia, were polled in 2007 and 2011 by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

"The change
in attitudes was most evident in Letcher County, where the percentage of residents
who said local natural resources should be used to create jobs now jumped from
35 percent in 2007 to 54 percent in 2011," University of Kentucky student Mary Chellis Austin writes for The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, the Letcher County seat.

"In 2007, only
16 percent of Letcher County residents in the poll said conservation and environmental
rules have generally been a bad thing for the community. In 2011, that share
approximately doubled, to 36 percent. . . . Taken
together as a region, the two counties showed a clear change in attitude. The
share favoring use of natural resources to create jobs rose from 37 percent in
2007 to 52 percent in 2011. The share
who thought environmental rules had been bad for the community rose from 17
percent in 2007 to 33 percent in 2011. Both results were outside the error
margin for both polls, which was 3.1 percentage points." For local residents' comments on the reasons for the changes, click here.

Austin is a student in a Community Journalism course taught by Al Cross, who contributed to the story. He is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog.

About us: www.RuralJournalism.org

About The Rural Blog

This blog generally follows traditional journalistic standards. It's not about opinions, though you may read one here occasionally. It's about facts that we think will be useful to rural journalists, non-rural journalists who do rural stories, and others interested in rural issues. We don't try to be provocative, so we don't generate as many comments as most blogs with the level of traffic we have, but we certainly invite comments -- and contributions, to al.cross@uky.edu. Feel free to republish blog items, with credit to us and the original source.